“Big Hero 6” producer Roy Conli reflects on his first-ever Academy Award nomination

Jim Hill

10 years ago

After Disney “Tangled” made its theatrical debut
back in November of 2010, Roy Conli thought that there was no way to top the
experience that this veteran producer had just had on that Walt Disney
Animation Studios production.

“I honestly thought that ‘Tangled’ was going to be my
Disney legacy. I mean, we faced so many technical challenges on that movie.
Scenes where we had 45,000 lanterns floating in the air to Rapunzel’s 70 feet
of hair. Not to mention that we reinvented WDAS’ entire CG production pipeline
while we were working on this movie. Which meant that we weren’t getting any
images on ‘Tangled’ that we could really use in the finished film ’til March of
2010. Which was less than eight months before this movie was supposed to be
released to theaters,” Roy
recalled during a recent phone interview.

But in the end, all those risks that Conli and the
“Tangled” production team took ultimately paid off. This Academy
Award-nominated animated feature — thanks to its strong female protagonist as
well as its ambitious storyline (which had some genuine emotional heft) —
represented a big step forward for Walt Disney Animation Studios.

“I remember telling the ‘Tangled’ crew about grimace
moments. How when you watch a movie that you worked on and you think ‘Ah, I
wish we could have done that scene better,’ or ‘I wish that we’d had the time
or the money to fix that particular story problem.’ But when I watched ‘Tangled,’
I had no grimace moments. I could watch that film over & over & over
again. I just love that I got to help Nathan Greno & Byron Howard reinvent
the way Disney does fairytales,” Roy
enthused.

Now please note Conli’s turn of phrase in the above sentence
(i.e., “Got to help”). Given that Roy
views feature animation as a director-driven medium, he thinks that a
producer’s main responsibility is to help the director achieve their specific
vision for that project.

“That’s why — when Don Hall first came to me to talk
about ‘Big Hero 6’ — I have to admit that I found his pitch for this project
extremely compelling. The very idea that a boy could first lose his brother and then be repaired by
his brother’s invention, this robot, that sounded like a story that was really
worth telling,” Conli admitted.

More to the point, given the maturity of storytelling that
WDAS had demonstrated with its recent work on “Tangled,”
“Wreck-It Ralph” and “Frozen,” Roy
felt that the studio was now up to the challenges of “Big Hero 6.”
Which — while it was set in a Marvel-inspired universe — was still basically
a story about grief and loss.

Speaking of Marvel: Given that a tale involved superheroes
needs a super-sized setting, “Big Hero 6” production designer Paul
Felix really pulled out the stops as he was designing San Fransokyo.

“For this film, it was absolutely essential that we
have a setting that felt contemporary and lived in. San Fransokyo had to be a
city that you recognized but — at the same time — still be a suitable
background for a comic book fantasy. Paul delivered in spades,” Conli
enthused. “We’ve never built a world this big for a Walt Disney Animation
Studios production before. How big is San Fransokyo? You could take the worlds
that we built for ‘Tangled’ & ‘Frozen’ & ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ and put them all
together, and combined they still wouldn’t be as big as San Fransokyo is.”

And — of course — a city of that size needs citizens.
Which reminded Roy of a challenge
that he faced while producing Disney’s June 1996 release, “The Hunchback
of Notre Dame.”

“Given that crowds in the streets of that hand-drawn
film were all computer-generated, ‘Hunchback’ was my first real foray into CG.
But we’re not rubber stamping crowds anymore. To properly populate San
Fransokyo, Disney developed Denizen, which is this system that allows every
citizen of the city to be an individual,” Conli continued. “That’s
why — on ‘Big Hero 6’ — we were able to have a cast of extras which was 750
people deep.”

There are lots of other impressive tech-related factoids
that Roy could toss out there about
“Big Hero 6.” Take — for example — how Disney used one of the
biggest rendering farms in animation history while it was producing this motion
picture. But by doing something like that, Conli feels that it then somehow
diminishes the contribution of the genuinely talented WDAS employees who
actually create that tech.

“The technicians who work here at Walt Disney Animation
Studios? They’re all amazing artists,” Conli stated. “That — to my
way of thinking, anyway — is the real magic of this medium. Chris Williams,
Don Hall and I could hand a scene off to guys like Kyle Odermatt and Hank
Driskill, who were our visual supervisor and our technical supervisor on ‘Big
Hero 6.’ We could give them a template of where we want them to go with that
scene. And then Kyle and Hank would come back and surprise us. Because when we
get that scene back, it’s always better than you expected it to be.”

“Big Hero 6” producer Roy Conli walks the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of
this Walt Disney Animation Studios production with his inflatable buddy,
Baymax. Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

Of course, a producer has to have a lot of faith and trust
in his production team before he’ll then let them go off and plus a scene like
that. But given that Roy has worked
with some of these WDAS staffers for over two decades now, he really trusts in
their artistic instincts and abilities.

“That’s the really cool thing about working at Walt
Disney Animation Studios these days. There’s a team here that’s kind of grown
up together. Don, Chris, myself, Paul Felix our production designer? We’ve all
been here about 20 years. And Paul Briggs, the Head of Story on ‘Big Hero 6’?
I’ve known Paul since he was an intern. And to see him mature into this
phenomenal leader of men, that’s just been great,” Conli laughed.
“Given our collective experience and the excellent work that this Studio
did on ‘Tangled,’ ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ and ‘Frozen’ … Well, that’s why I felt we
were up to the challenges of ‘Big Hero 6.’ I knew that this team could strike
just the right balance between this movie’s mystery elements, our
boy-and-his-robot story and its superhero-sized setting.”

Which isn’t to say that — when push came to shove — that Roy
wasn’t willing to play the I’m-the-Producer card and then tell his
friends-of-twenty-plus-years about specific concerns he had about this motion
picture. Take — for example — “Big Hero 6” s central character,
Hiro Hamada.

“You have to remember that I had previously produced a
movie for Disney — ‘Treasure Planet’ — where that film’s central character
was a teenage boy. And while I’m extremely proud of the work that Walt Disney
Animation Studios did on that particular motion picture, I also have to admit
that audiences had trouble warming to Jim Hawkins. Especially during the early
parts of ‘Treasure Planet.’ And I think that one of the issues that audiences
had with Jim Hawkins that he spent much of the First Act of that movie being a
sullen teen,” Conli explained. “Which is why — during our earliest
discussions about ‘Big Hero 6’ — I kept saying over & over again to Don
and Chris and Paul that the audience had to love Hiro. Which — given that we
wanted Hiro to be an authentic 14 year-old boy — wasn’t going to be easy.
Because as every parent can tell you, most 14 year-olds can be a little
surly.”

“Of course, what helped us keep Hiro authentically 14
was his relationship with Tadashi. Anyone who has a brother or a sister knows
about that special bond that siblings have. How there’s no one else on the
planet that can tick you off quite as much as your brother or your sister can.
But at the same time, there’s no one who moves faster to help you once you get
in trouble,” Roy continued.
“That’s why I’m especially proud of the work that was done on Hiro &
Tadashi’s scenes together. I think that those scenes in ‘Big Hero 6’ have some
of the most authentic depictions of brotherly love that have ever been seen on
film.”

Which perhaps explains — as Conli sat watching the
work-in-progress version of “Big Hero 6” earlier this year — he once
again found himself viewing another grimace-free movie. Or better yet, why Roy
was thrilled earlier this month when he learned that this Walt Disney Animation
Studios production had been nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar.

“I’ve worked with the greatest artists in the animation field for
the last 22 years. This nomination means the world to me, but more importantly,
‘Big Hero 6’ ‘s nomination means the world to them. I will always cherish this
moment, and share it with the hundreds of artists that have made this dream
come true.”

This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post’s Entertainment page on Friday, January 23, 2015